An Unexpected Visit
by BlazingMockingjays
Summary: 10 Years before the Lightning Thief during the Winter Solstice six demigods suddenly find themselves on Olympus. Join as they all read about Percy's life from the first book to the last. Leo, Piper, Jason, Annabeth, Thalia, and Nico. Eventually Percy and others will join. Enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

**Yeah, Yeah, update other stuff I know. But I wanna write this. So enjoy!**

The Winter Solstice. The one time of the year where all of the gods and goddess-all of them, including Hades- gathered on Mount Olympus to, well, argue. About everything and nothing, as usual.

"_Mother Rhea liked me the best!"_

"_No she liked me the best!"_

"_Obviously she liked me the best, she saved me from Father!"_

"_Olive trees are much better!"_

"_They're trees! What good comes from them?"_

"_Stay away from my wife!"_

"_Maybe you should keep better care of her then!"_

"_Hey Sis wanna hear the-"_

"_No! And don't call me Sis!"_

Suddenly a group of demigods tumbled from the sky, screaming until they all landed on the marble floor of Olympus. There were six of them and the gods and goddess all immediately drew their weapons and pointed them at the demigods. They didn't relax until they confirmed that they were, I fact, just mere demigods and not monsters. No sooner than the groaning demigods get to their feet did one of the six, a boy with pale skin and dark hair, raise his fist at the ceiling and yell, "What was that for Apollo?! What in Hades did you-" he cut off when someone nudged him, a goth looking girl with choppy black hair and a Hunters bow slung across her back. She pointed at the gods and the boys gaze fell on them. "Oh."

He gulped then immediately knelt, the others following him. He raised his gaze onto Apollo as he stood back up, glaring. "Really Apollo? One minute you're lecturing us and the next you fling us down into Olympus?"

Apollo frowned at the boy. "What are you talking about? I don't even know who any of you are." A flash of light appeared above them and tumbling down came five books, along with a 'Sorry' that definitely sounded like Apollo.

The boy glared at Apollo, rubbing his head like it hurt, and picked up the books. Taped to the front of one of them was a note. The boy frowned and read it out loud.

**Dearest Family:**

**Hey yo! So these demigods have come to the past to read about our favorite *thunder* some people's favorite demigod. This was all Zeus' idea (Actually it was Athena's) so, please don't blast them to bits because it could disrupt the timeline and everything will be destroyed and all that jazz. So no harm to them, and read the book! Demigods, introduce yourself, full title and everything. After all this is over, the gods will forget all of this until the events pass. Peace out!**

**The most awesome god of all, **

**Apollo**

**P.S. There may be other demigods**

**P.P.S There may be other books too.**

**P.P.P.S Sorry about the fall**

Zeus frowned slightly as he stared at the six demigods, lowering his bolt reluctantly and looking disappointed that he couldn't blast them all to bits. "Well, I suppose since I approved… whatever this is, then we won't kill you."

"Father, since Apollo said it was my idea, then it must have a reason behind it." Athena stated, resting her calculating eyes on the six demigods. "I wouldn't give such an idea unless it was needed."

A Latino boy with curly black hair and elfish features glared at Athena. He wore a white shirt covered in grease stains and some places were burnt along with suspenders on his jeans. "It better be needed!" He took a step forward and a young girl with choppy brown hair had to hold him back. "I'm in the middle of trying to build the Argo II and then all of the sudden I wind up here! I don't have time for this!" He was still glaring and breathing heavy as the girl whispered urgently into his ear and he slowly seemed to calm down, though he didn't stop glaring at Athena.

Athena narrowed her eyes, but decided it would be wise to hold her tongue, something she didn't do often. "Enough of this!" Zeus scowled. "Introduce yourselves, demigods, so we can get started.

The boy who was yelling previously stepped forward and raised his chin. "Leo Valdez. Son of Hephaestus. Fire user," At this the gods gasped and looked at Hephaestus. There hasn't been a fire user for decades! He just shrugged though, and smiled down at Leo as the boy continued. "Supreme Admiral of the Argo II, and one of the seven."

The girl who had held him back then stepped up, her hand nervously positioned over the hilt of her knife she kept strapped to her belt. "Piper McLean. Daughter of Aphrodite, charm speaker, one of the seven."

The pale Italian boy who yelled at Apollo stepped forward. "Nico di Angelo. Son of Hades, Ghost King." **(A/N They already know about Thalia and Nico) **

Nico stepped aside when Thalia walked up, and she smiled at Artemis. "Thalia Grace. Daughter of Zeus, Hunter and Lieutenant of Artemis."

Artemis frowned slightly. "What? What happened to Zoe?" She was growing slightly concerned about her present lieutenant.

Thalia just looked at her sadly before a girl with curly blond hair and sharp grey eyes took her place. "Annabeth Chase. Daughter of Athena, Architect of Olympus, one of the seven."

"Architect of Olympus?" Athena asked, confused as to why Olympus would need an architect. But, she also couldn't help the swell of pride at finding out what her daughter has accomplished.

Annabeth shook her head. "I can't tell you right now." She said softly, and her gaze flicked over to Poseidon. Grief and sorrow flashed over her eyes at the sight of him but it was gone as quickly as it came and a boy with blond hair and blue eyes stepped up next, an air of confidence around him. "My name is Jason Grace. Son of Jupiter, Praetor of Camp Jupiter, and one of the seven."

The gods and goddess gasped as they flickered between their Greek and Roman forms, murmurs coming from all of them. "What is a Roman doing here?" "They are supposed to be kept separate?" "Zeus what is going on?"

"Stop!" Zeus bellowed as he finally settled in his Greek form, seeing as how there are more Greeks than Romans in the room. The rest soon followed suit and Zeus took a deep breath, waving at the books. "Now. I don't know what is going on, but hopefully if we read these books we will find out."

Annabeth hesitated before she sat down and grabbed the books, and the other demigods sat around her. She picked up the first one and stifled a gasp, swallowing a lump in her throat. "It's called Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief." Her voice wavered slightly when she said his name. Thalia squeezed her shoulder lightly and Annabeth gave her a weak smile before she opened the book and began reading.

**Hope you guys enjoy! Reviews always welcome :P**


	2. I Accidently Vaporize My Teacher

**Alright everyone! Enjoy!**

"**I Accidentally Vaporize my Pre-Algebra Teacher**," Annabeth read.

"Are all of the chapters going to be named like this?" Leo asked.

Annabeth smirked slightly. "Knowing Percy, probably."

Leo grinned at this. "Sweet."

**Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.**

"No one does." Thalia muttered and all the demigods nodded in agreement, causing the others to frown. Did all of their children feel like that?

**If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is:**

"Don't listen to it!" Nico exclaimed, eyes wide. "Percy gives the worst advice ever!"

**Close this book right now. Believe whatever lies your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life. Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways. **

All of the demigods nodded in agreement, murmuring to themselves before Annabeth shushed them and kept reading.

**If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened. But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they'll come for you.**

"Huh." Nico blinked, slightly sheepish. "That uh actually isn't bad advice."

**Don't say I didn't warn you.**

**My name is Percy Jackson.**

Annabeth's voice wavered slightly. Her fears were confirmed. She was almost completely sure the book was about her Seaweed Brain before, but now the book confirmed it. She swallowed before she continued reading.

**I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.**

**Am I a troubled kid?**

"Yes!" Annabeth, Thalia, and Nico answered immediately, while the other three demigods stared at them. "Is he really that bad?" Jason asked, raising an eyebrow.

**Yeah. You could say that.**

Thalia smirked at Jason. "He just admitted it. Yeah, it is that bad."

**I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.**

"Interesting…" Athena mused at the same time Annabeth grinned with excitement. "That sounds like fun."

**I know—it sounds like torture.**

Annabeth and Athena frowned at that and huffed simultaneously.

Apollo smirked. "Like mother like daughter."

**Most Yancy field trips were.**

**Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.**

Thalia frowned and looked up at Dionysus. "Is that Chiron?"

Dionysus waved his hand, obviously bored and a Diet Coke appeared. "Yes, yes, that's Chiron." He said wearily, as if he really didn't want to be here which was probably true.

**I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.**

Annabeth snorted. "Right. Trouble is attracted to him like a moth to a flame.

**Boy, was I wrong. **

"See! He admits it!" Annabeth pointed out to no one in particular.

**Bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway.**

Hermes, Apollo, and Leo immediately burst out laughing. "I love this kid!"

**And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. **

By this point Leo was rolling around laughing on the floor, and Hermes and Apollo were about about join him

**And the time before that... Well, you get the idea.**

"Aw." Apollo pouted and whined. "I wanted to hear more!"

"If you don't stop whining I'll give you something to whine about." Artemis threatened then muttered under her breath. "Boys."

**This trip, I was determined to be good.**

Hermes frowned. "Well where's the fun in that?"

**All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich. **

Thalia grimaced. "This isn't going to end well…"

"Why not?" Piper questioned, eyeing the book in Annabeth's hands.

"Because Percy gets scary protective of his friends." Nico answered, remembering how horrible Percy looked when he told Nico he failed him.

**Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. **

"Way to go Grover." Annabeth said dryly.

**He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. **

Thalia snickered. "Grover's going to love how Percy described him."

**He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.**

Thalia rolled her eyes. "Wow. Way to not give anything away." Though she couldn't help but be slightly amused. Only Grover would act like that because it was enchilada day.

**Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death **

"WHAT?!" Poseidon bellowed, eyes full of rage.

**by in-school suspension **

Poseidon immediately calmed down and grinned sheepishly. "Oh."

The other gods gave him weird looks, wondering why he even cared but they shrugged it off as Annabeth continued reading.

**if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.**

"Aw well that's not fair." Hermes whined. "Then what's the point in going?"

**Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter." He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch. "That's it." **

"Fight?" Ares perked up, looking hopeful. He's been pretty uninterested in the book up until now.

**I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat. "You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens." **

Ares grumbled and went back to sharpening his sword, disappointed there wouldn't be any fighting.

**Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.**

Nico groaned. "Great, what'd he do this time?"

**Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.**

**He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.**

**It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.**

"Longer." All of the gods and goddess said in unsion, even Aphrodite who was not really paying attention, filing away at her already perfect nails.

**He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.**

"For trying to listen to the teacher?" Athena asked, appalled.

**Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.**

"Nervous breakdown." Jason repeated. "Right…"

**From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.**

Nico frowned slightly. Something about her seemed familiar, and not in a good way.

**One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right." Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.**

"Monster?" Piper wondered, but no one answered her.

**Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you shut up?"**

**It came out louder than I meant it to.**

"Of course it did…" Annabeth sighed in exasperation.

**The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.**

**"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"**

**My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."**

Leo snickered. "Caught by the teacher."

**Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?**

**I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"**

The gods paled and Poseidon grimaced. "Why that one… There are hundreds of other carvings that have nothing to do with that."

**"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied.**

**"And he did this because ..."**

**"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god,**

"GOD?" Zeus roared, eyes flashing with anger.

**and—"**

**"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.**

**"Titan," I corrected myself.**

Zeus nodded, seemingly satisfied. "Better."

**"And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead.**

"So…" Hades drawled out. "Since that worked, does that mean Father is stupid, or does it mean that Zeus looks like a rock?" Everyone laughed while Zeus glared at his brother.

**And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"**

**"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.**

"Yeah. Ew is the correct term to describe it." Hestia agreed, who had been quietly tending to her fire before then.

**"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."**

"He just summed up the biggest War in history in a few sentances." Jason stated.

Annabeth shrugged. ""That's Percy for you." A wave of sadness crashed over her and Aphrodite jerked her head up, her gaze landing on the demigods. She felt love flow from one of them… Who was it. She put away her nail file, determined to figure out who it was.

**Some snickers from the group. Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"**

**"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"**

"Busted." Nico smirked.

**"Busted," Grover muttered.**

Nico paled and his hands flew to his head. "Oh no! I think like a goat!"

**"Shut up," Nancy hissed her face even brighter red than her hair.**

A few of the demigods cringed from that image. "Well that's attractive." Leo stated, his words heavy with sarcasm.

**At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears. I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."**

"He does now." Thalia murmured quietly.

**"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"**

"Smooth Chiron. Real smooth." Leo snorted.

**The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.**

"That's because they are." Artemis muttered and punched Apollo who was trying to lick his elbow.

**Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."**

**I knew that was coming.**

**I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"**

**Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.**

"He has seen a lot, close to everything but not quite." Athena stated.

**"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me.**

**"About the Titans?"**

**"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."**

**"Oh."**

"And that ladies and gentlemen pretty much sums up Percy Jackson." Thalia announced dramatically.

**"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."**

**I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard.**

He has to Seaweed Brain, Annabeth thought sadly.

Aphrodite perked up and studied the demigods. There it was again!

**I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped.**

"Sounds like a lot of fun." Athena agreed while Leo looked like he wanted to die just at the thought of doing that.

**But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C— in my life. No—he didn't expect me to be as good; he expected me to be better. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly. I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.**

"He probably was." Dionysus said boredly, taking a sip from his Diet Coke.

**He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.**

**The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.**

**Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been weird since Christmas.**

Everyone's gaze shot towards Poseidon and Zeus but nobody said anything, not yet.

**We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.**

"Okay what are you two fighting about this time?" Athena demanded, her calculating grey eyes narrowed at the two of them.

Poseidon grumbled. "It's probably his fault."

**Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.**

Demeter shot a questioning glance at Hermes. "One of yours?" The look she got in return showed offense that she would even think that… thing was his child.

**Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from that school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.**

"Well he is a loser but not much of a freak." Thalia agreed, and frowned at the glare Annabeth gave her. "Hey! I said he wasn't much of a freak."

**"Detention?" Grover asked.**

**"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius."**

Annabeth snorted. "That's an understatement."

**Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"**

Everyone bursts out laughing and even Hades and Zeus manage to chuckle a little.

**I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.**

**I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home.**

"What a wimp." Ares muttered.

Hera glared at him. "At least the boy cares for his mother." She said pointedly.

**She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.**

Everyone who had met Sally before smiled slightly, knowing that is exactly what Sally would do.

**Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.**

"Oh my gods!" Leo jumped to his feet, eyes filled with excitement. "I am so making one of those!" He finally sat back down after Piper pulled him down and motioned for Annabeth to keep reading.

**I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.**

**"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.**

Everyone grimaced at that beautiful image. (Note the sarcasm.

**I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.**

"POSEIDON!" Zeus and Hades yelled, the entire throne room shaking.

"You broke the oath!" Zeus roared at his brother.

"As did you brother," Poseidon said calmly. "Twice, if I recall." He gave a pointed look at Jason and Thalia.

Zeus scowled and pointed in the middle of the room. There was a flash of lightning and as the smoke faded. There was a small baby sitting on the ground with a blue blanket and his thumb in his mouth.

"Zeus, what are you doing? Why is there a baby here?" Demeter questioned, her gaze confused.

The small boy couldn't have been older than three. He had black hair that was sticking up everywhere and pajama footsies that had little fish, turtles, and bubbles all over it. His sea-green eyes stared up at Zeus.

"Percy," Poseidon breathed, standing up from his throne. He was just as perfect as the last time he had visited.

Zeus scowled, his anger was visible he was so frious. "Yes. And I will make sure that these events never happen." Lightning shot from him hand and the demigods could only watch in horror and Annabeth jumped to her feet. "No!" she screamed, tears in her eyes.

Poseidon roared and ran to Percy, thrusting out his trident. The lightning was absorbed into the Trident and Poseidon seethed, standing in front of Percy. "If you ever try to hurt him again," Poseidon began, his voice low and dangerous. "You will have war."

Zeus got to his feet, energy crackling off of him. "Are you defying your King?"

Annabeth rushed forward and stood next to Poseidon before he could say anything. "You can't! Apollo gave specific instructions saying you can't do anything to mess up the timeline!"

"My daughter is right." Athena nodded. "Killing the boy would be unwise. Best wait and see if he dies by your hand in the book."

A few sent her glares but she just shrugged. She was only stating the facts.

Zeus continued glaring at Poseidon before he sat back down. "Fine. The child," he sneered. "Won't die. For now."

Poseidon let out a breath of relief and turned to Percy, who had started to cry from all the loud noises. He careful picked him up and sat back down on his Throne. "Hey Percy." He shushed, rocking the boy gently. Slowly, Percy's cries turned into sniffles and then he was asleep in his dad's arms, his mouth open and drooling.

Poseidon chuckled and motioned for Annabeth to continue reading.

**I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"**

**Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.**

**Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"**

**"—the water—"**

**"—like it grabbed her—"**

"Definitely Poseidon's son." Apollo agreed, sneaking a glance at Percy, who had stuck his thumb in his mouth in his sleep.

**I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.**

**As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"**

**"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."**

"Never guess your punishment!" Hermes yelled.

**That wasn't the right thing to say.**

**"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.**

Hermes smirked. "See?"

**"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. I pushed her."**

**I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.**

**She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.**

Leo grinned. "I gotta get him to do that."

**"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.**

**"But—"**

**"You—will—stay—here."**

**Grover looked at me desperately.**

**"It's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."**

**"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me. "Now."**

**Nancy Bobofit smirked.**

**I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare.**

Nico shuddered. "You do not want to be on the receiving end of that."

**Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.**

**How'd she get there so fast?**

Piper paled. "Okay yeah that is definitely a monster."

**I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.**

**I wasn't so sure.**

**I went after Mrs. Dodds.**

**Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.**

Thalia sighed and shook her head. 'Chiron and his books…"

**I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.**

**Okay, I thought. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.**

**But apparently that wasn't the plan.**

"Of course it wasn't Seaweed Brain." Annabeth muttered under her breath.

**I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.**

**Except for us, the gallery was empty.**

**Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.**

Jason frowned. "Monster, but what kind of monster?"

**Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...**

**"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.**

**I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am."**

Nico gasped, eyes wide. "Percy is being polite?"

**She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"**

**The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.**

Everyone shifted uneasily, hoping that someone would do something before the monster attacked.

**She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.**

**I said, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am."**

**Thunder shook the building.**

Everyone's gaze flickered to Zeus but he just shrugged and resumed glaring at Poseidon.

**"We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."**

**I didn't know what she was talking about.**

**All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room.**

Hermes snickered. "This guy is a riot!"

**Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.**

Annabeth frowned. "Hey! That is one of my favorite books!"

**"Well?" she demanded.**

**"Ma'am, I don't..."**

**"Your time is up," she hissed.**

**Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.**

Poseidon's eyes widened and he glared at Hades. "You sent a Fury after my son?" he shouted, and then Percy proceeded to cry. Poseidon promptly forgot, for now, as he quickly got Percy to settle down. Annabeth took the chance and continued to read.

**Then things got even stranger.**

**Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.**

Jason blinked. "A pen? How is that going to help?"

**"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.**

**Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.**

**With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.**

"Ohh…" Jason nodded and shrugged. "That's pretty cool." He admitted.

**Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.**

**My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.**

Ares snorted. "What a loser. Can't even hold a sword." He was quieted by a slap from Aphrodite.

**She snarled, "Die, honey!"**

Nico groaned. "Enough with the honey!" he complained.

**And she flew straight at me.**

**Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.**

"Naturally." Jason repeated and shook his head in amazement. It took weeks just for some Roman campers to be able to do that.

**The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. Hisss!**

**Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.**

**I was alone.**

**There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.**

**Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.**

"The Mist is still affecting him." Athena noted, shaking her head.

**My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.**

**Had I imagined the whole thing?**

**I went back outside.**

**It had started to rain.**

"No way, idiot." Annabeth said affectionately. Aphrodite was hit with the wave of love again and her gaze landed on Annabeth curiously. Was it her?

**Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."**

""Who?" Poseidon frowned.

**I said, "Who?"**

Apollo snorted. "Like father like son."

**"Our teacher. Duh!"**

**I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.**

**She just rolled her eyes and turned away.**

**I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.**

**He said, "Who?"**

**But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.**

Hermes frowned in disappointment. "Weak. I'll make Travis and Conner give him lessons on lying."

**"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."**

**Thunder boomed overhead.**

Everyone looked at Zeus again and he scowled. "For the last time I don't know!"

**I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.**

**I went over to him.**

**He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."**

**I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.**

**"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"**

**He spared at me blankly. "Who?"**

Hermes whistled, impressed. "Now that is impressive lying."

**"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."**

**He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"**

Annabeth looked up. "That's the end."

"Oh! I want to read!" Nico reached over and grabbed the book from her and he wasted no time in beginning to read.


	3. Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death

"**Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death,"** Nico starts.

"Old Ladies?" Piper questioned.

"Knitting?" Leo shuddered, looking horrified at the idea of knitting.

"Socks of Death?" Nico wondered. That was definitely something he had never heard of before. No one noticed the way Annabeth's face darkened in realization.

**I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly.**

**This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr—a perky blond woman whom I'd never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip—had been our pre-algebra teacher since Christmas.**

"Poor Percy…" Thalia murmured. "Probably thinks he is going crazy."

**Every so often I would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho.**

Nico paused from reading to laugh. "He is psycho."

**It got so I almost believed them—Mrs. Dodds had never existed.**

**Almost.**

"Almost? I wonder why he didn't." Jason thought aloud while Annabeth and Thalia shared an exasperated, knowing glance.

**But Grover couldn't fool me.**

"Oh." Jason shifted uncomfortably, feeling like he was missing out on a joke as Annabeth and Thalia burst out laughing.

**When I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, and then claim she didn't exist. But I knew he was lying.**

**Something was going on. Something ****_had _****happened at the museum.**

"I thought Percy would have been smarter than this." Jason whispered quietly.

Piper smacked his arm with a disapproving frown. "The Mist isn't fair. You can't blame him."

**I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat.**

All the demigods murmured sympathetically, they all knew what it was like to be attacked by your first monster. Especially when you had no training at all.

"Wimp." Ares snorted but was soon silenced by Poseidon's glare.

**The freak weather continued, which didn't help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.**

Everyone turned to stare at Zeus and Poseidon. "What are you two fighting about now?" Dionysus asked in a bored tone.

Zeus glared at Poseidon, still seething in rage. "Probably that he broke the oath and had a child.

Poseidon didn't react, too busy playing peek-a-boo with Percy and not caring who saw. He never got to spend any time with Percy and he was going to cherish it while he had the chance.

**I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from Ds to Fs.**

Annabeth and Athena gasped in unison and Annabeth looked like she was going to faint just from hearing the horrible grades.

**I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.**

**Finally, when our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I snapped. I called him an old sot. I wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.**

Everyone seemed very confused, save for Annabeth and Athena. "It… it means an old drunkard." Annabeth explained through her laughter and everyone quickly joined her.

"So like old Dionysus right?" Apollo teased, laughing so hard there were tears in his.

**The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.**

**Fine, I told myself. Just fine.**

**I was homesick.**

"Aw…" came from the girls in the room, except Athena and Hera, the loudest of all coming from Aphrodite.

**I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties.**

Annabeth scowled at the mention of the name and ignored the questioning looks sent her way. She had a feeling they would find out why she hated him soon enough.

**And yet... there were things I'd miss at Yancy. The view** **of the woods outside my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I'd miss Grover, who'd been a good friend, even if he was a little strange.**

**I worried how he'd survive next year without me.**

"Oh, he'll be fine." Thalia commented dismissively, a faint trace of a smile on her face.

**I'd miss Latin class, too—Mr. Brunner's crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well.**

**As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for.**

"Well, at least he is studying for something…" Athena muttered in a disapproving tone.

**I hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to believe him.**

**The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the ****_Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology _****across my dorm room. Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon,**

"Well he definitely knows now." Annabeth chuckled. "I mean, he even bribed Charon to-" she quickly stopped talking when she saw how alarmed Poseidon looked.

**Or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.**

"Latin isn't that hard." Jason frowned, slightly confused. Wasn't Latin easy to understand to a demigod?

Annabeth shrugged. "It is to some demigods. Just like to Romans Greek is harder than Latin.

**I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.**

**I remembered Mr. Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. ****_I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson._**

**I took a deep breath. I picked up the mythology book.**

**I'd never asked a teacher for help before. Maybe if I talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat F I was about to score on his exam. I didn't want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn't tried.**

Annabeth smiled. That was the Percy she knew. He never wanted to let anybody down.

**I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.**

**I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said,** **_"..._** **worried about Percy, sir."**

**I froze.**

**I'm not usually an eavesdropper,**

Nico paused from his reading to stare at the book in disbelief. "Yeah right!"

**but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.**

"You know he has a point." Leo put in. "I remember this one time-" and he began launching into one of his long winded stories until Piper shut him by threatening to take away his belt.

**I inched closer.**

**"... alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the ****_school_****! Now that we know for sure, and ****_they _****know too—"**

**"We would only make matters worse by rushing him," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the boy to mature more."**

"Percy? Mature?" Thalia had trouble holding back her laugh. "He would have been waiting a long time then."

**"But he may not have time. The summer solstice dead line—"**

**"Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can."**

**"Sir, he ****_saw _****her... ."**

**"His imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that."**

Jason shuddered. "I hate Mist. So, so much."

**"Sir, I ... I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."**

Thalia clenched her first. "He did **not** fail! I was the one that told him to keep going. It wasn't his fault!"

**"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall—"**

**The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud.**

Hermes groaned and ran a hand over his face. "Such an amateur. You should never give away your position!"

**Mr. Brunner went silent.**

**My heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall.**

"That's better." Hermes stated, seemingly satisfied with Percy's actions. "At least he isn't leaving any evidence that he was there. Then he surely would have been made."

**A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.**

"Why is Chiron not in his wheelchair? That is very unwise." Artemis frowned. "There could have been a student in the hallway."

**I opened the nearest door and slipped inside.**

**A few seconds later I heard a slow ****_clop-clop-clop, _****like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, and then moved on.**

**A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.**

**Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. "Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."**

"What happened during the Winter Solstice?" Jason questioned, glancing up at the demigods surrounding him, but no one answered.

**"Mine neither," Grover said. "But I could have sworn ..."**

**"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow."**

**"Don't remind me."**

**The lights went out in Mr. Brunner's office.**

**I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.**

**Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm.**

**Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he'd been there all night.**

**"Hey," he said, bleary-eyed. "You going to be ready for this test?"**

"Hmm… not bad not bad… Though he could still do with some lessons from some of my kids. Little too casual if you know what I mean."

"Hermes?"

"Yes?"

"SHUT UP."

**I didn't answer.**

**"You look awful." He frowned. "Is everything okay?"**

**"Just... tired."**

**I turned so he couldn't read my expression,**

"Dummy," Annabeth murmured affectionately. "He can still read your emotions."

Aphrodite narrowed her eyes at the group of demigods. There it was again, that wave of love. But she couldn't tell where it was coming from because Jason and Piper's love was messing with her judegement.

**and started getting ready for bed.**

**I didn't understand what I'd heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I'd imagined the whole thing.**

**But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger.**

Nico paused and glanced up from the book. "Isn't he always in danger? I mean," he glanced up at Poseidon who was staring fondly at little Percy in his arms asleep. "He was in danger a few minutes ago."

Thalia sighed. "That's the life of a demigod."

The other murmured in agreement and the gods al shared uncomfortable looks.

**The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam,**

"WHAT?" Leo looked like he was going to pass out. He started fanning himself with his hand and his other hand was pressed against his forehead. "Three hours? How can anyone survive that?"

Annabeth decided not to mention the five hour test she once had to take in her old school. Leo might have a heart attack.

**my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I'd misspelled, Mr. Brunner called me back inside.**

**For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.**

**"Percy," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's ... it's for the best."**

Nico's gaze darkened as he rea. He had plenty of teachers tell him the same thing; he could tell this wasn't going to end well for Percy.

**His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.**

Annabeth made gagging noises and Thalia nodded in agreement, looking disgusted herself.

**I mumbled, "Okay, sir."**

**"I mean ..." Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."**

Annabeth frowned but stayed silent while Leo shook his head. "Jeez, harsh. I never thought Chiron would say something like that."

**Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.**

**"Right," I said, trembling.**

**"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say ... you're not normal, Percy. That's nothing to be—"**

Thalia shook her head sadly. "That definitely wasn't the right thing to say

**"Thanks," I blurted. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me."**

**"Percy—"**

**But I was already gone.**

Leo whistled lowly. "Wow man. That just sucks."

**On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.**

**The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were ****_rich _****juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.**

"He is not a nobody!" Poseidon cried. "He is the son of a god!"

"Yes, but he doesn't know that." Annabeth explained patiently, though there was a note of exasperation in her voice.

**They asked me what I'd be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city.**

**What I didn't tell them was that I'd have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I'd go to school in the fall.**

**"Oh," one of the guys said. "That's cool."**

**They went back to their conversation as if I'd never existed.**

Hestia spoke up for the first time, her voice disapproving. "Well that wasn't very nice of them."

**The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out, I didn't have to. He'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had,**

"Well that's definitely not creepy at all." Apollo muttered, messing around with his sunglasses.

**so there we were, together again, heading into the city.**

**During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen.**

"Probably because something bad was bound to happen." Thalia stated in exasperation. If Percy was here she would smack him.

**Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.**

**Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.**

**I said, "Looking for Kindly Ones?"**

**Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha—what do you mean?"**

Leo smirked. "Seriouslu? That scared him? Jeez, this guy must not be very brave."

Thalia had him in a headlock with a knife to his throat faster than he could blink. "What were you saying?"

"Nothing!" Leo squeaked out, and Thalia seemed satisfied because she sat back down but kept her knife out and Leo eyed it nervously.

**I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.**

**Grover's eye twitched. "How much ****_did _****you hear?"**

**"Oh ... not much. What's the summer solstice dead-line?"**

"Oh not much, just the whole thing." Poseidon says smiling.

**He winced. "Look, Percy ... I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers …"**

**"Grover—"**

**"And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds, and ..."**

**"Grover, you're a really, really bad liar."**

Hermes groaned once again. "Alright that's it. I'm calling to have my kids give him lessons because this-this is horrendous!"

**His ears turned pink.**

**From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer.**

**The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:**

Dionysus smirked, as if he was sharing a joke only he understood. "Oh it is always so much fun to watch them struggle like that."

**_Grover Underwood_**

**_Keeper_**

**_Half-Blood Hill_**

**_Long Island, New York_**

**_(800)_** **_009-0009_**

**"What's Half—"**

**"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um ... summer address."**

"Summer address. Real original."

**My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.**

**"Okay," I said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."**

**He nodded. "Or...or if you need me."**

**"Why would I need you?"**

Annabeth frowned. "He's just trying to help."

**It came out harsher than I meant it to.**

**Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Percy, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you."**

**I stared at him.**

**All year long, I'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without me. And here he was acting like he was the one who defended ****_me._**

"He lost sleep over a satyr?" Artemis asked, disbelieving.

Thalia looked up at her Mistress and spoke up in defense of Percy. "Percy is loyal to the end. He will do anything for his friends."

**"Grover," I said, "What exactly are you protecting me from?"**

**There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs.**

Leo made a gagging noise. He hated that smell, he had smelled it one to many times in his many foster homes.

**The driver cursed and steered the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.**

**After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off. Grover and I filed outside with everybody else.**

**We were on a stretch of country road—no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.**

_Hey… I wonder if that is… __Nico thought, but then shook his head. It couldn't be._

**The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of blood red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice****_. _****There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I'd ever seen.**

Poseidon's eyes widened in alarm and he looked like he was going to have a heart attack. "No…" he whispered.

**I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.**

"The fates…" Artemis looked surprised. What in the world were the fates doing there?

**All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.**

**The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.**

Poseidon wrenched his gaze from the book and stared down at Percy, brushing his hand over his son's forehead. "Oh Percy… "

**I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.**

**"Grover?" I said. "Hey, man—"**

**"Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?"**

**"Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?"**

Leo chuckled, despite the tense atmosphere. "I like him. He knows how to joke around."

**"Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all."**

**The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors—gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears. I heard Grover catch his breath.**

**"We're getting on the bus," he told me. "Come on."**

**"What?" I said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."**

**"Come on!'" He pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.**

Thalia shook her head, wanting to smack Percy again. Why wouldn't he just do what Grover told him to do?

**Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that ****_snip _****across four lanes of traffic.**

Everyone in the throne room flinched, and Poseidon held Percy tighter to his chest but the little boy continued to sleep soundly.

**Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for—Sasquatch or Godzilla.**

**At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.**

**The passengers cheered.**

**"Darn right!" yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. "Everybody back on board!"**

**Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I'd caught the flu.**

Poseidon closed his eyes, as if he could pretend this wasn't happening then it wouldn't happen and Percy would be fine.

**Grover didn't look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.**

**"Grover?"**

**"Yeah?"**

**"What are you not telling me?"**

Annabeth shook her head. "Might as well tell him now Grover. No way is he going to stop asking questions until he knows the truth."

"**He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "Percy, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"**

**"You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They're not like ... Mrs. Dodds, are they?"**

**His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds. **

"Great deduction skills Percy." Nico stated dryly, chuckling slightly.

**He said, "Just tell me what you saw."**

**"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn."**

**He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost—older.**

**He said, "You saw her snip the cord."**

**"Yeah. So?" But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.**

"A very big deal." Hades says darkly, earning a few glares.

**"This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time."**

**"What last time?"**

Annabeth and Thalia shared a sad look but didn't speak.

**"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth."**

**"Grover," I said, because he was really starting to scare me. "What are you talking about?"**

**"Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me."**

Thalia smiled sadly. "At least he's trying."

**This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.**

**"Is this like a superstition or something?" I asked.**

**No answer.**

**"Grover—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"**

"Yes." Hades stated.

**He looked at me mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers I'd like best on my coffin.**

Nico looked up at the demigods and gods. "That's the end. Anyone else want to read?" He questioned, holding the book up for someone to grab.

"I will." Jason snatched the book out of Nico's hands, opens it up and began reading.

"**Grover Unexpectedly Loses his Pants"** Jason read.

**I finally updated! Yeah! Tell me what you guys think in te reviews, don't be shy!**


	4. Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Pants

As soon as the words were out of Jason's mouth all of the demigods, and a few of the immature gods, started to snicker. "Grover loses his pants?" Hermes snickered and Leo covered his mouth with his hand, eyes sparkling but wisely chose not to comment.

**Confession time: I ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.**

Annabeth sighed softly and shook her head, staring at the ground. "Why did you do that, seaweed brain…" she murmured to herself.

**I know, I know. It was rude. But Grover was freaking me out, looking at me like I was a dead man, muttering "Why does this always happen?" and "Why does it always have to be sixth grade?"**

**Whenever he got upset, Grover's bladder acted up, **

"His bladder acts up?" Leo burst, struggling to contain his laughter. That is, until he was hit round the head by Thalia and his laughter quickly stopped.

**so I wasn't surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made me promise to wait for him, then made a beeline for the restroom.**

**Instead of waiting, I got my suitcase, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.**

**"East One-hundred-and-fourth and First," I told the driver.**

**A word about my mother, before you meet her.**

"Awesome." Nico gave a small grin, remembering the time he stumbled in and Sally refused to let him leave until he had some food and sleep.

"Amazing." Thalia sighed, a small smile on her face.

"Brave." Annabeth murmured, remembering the first quest she went on with Percy to rescue his mother.

**Her name is Sally Jackson**

Little Percy stirred in Poseidon's hands upon hearing his mother's name and opened his wide sea-green eyes sleepily. "Mama?"

"Shh…" Poseidon hushed him, running his hand through the tufts of hair on Percy's head. "Go back to sleep."

**and she's the best person in the world, which just proves my theory that the ****best people have the rottenest luck.**

**Her own parents died in a plane crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who didn't care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.**

Artemis frowned and narrowed her eyes at Poseidon. "Why didn't you do anything?" No woman deserved something like this.

Poseidon looked away, eyes full of sorrow. "She would not allow me to help her. She wanted to find her way on her own without help."

"That's where Percy gets his stubbornness from." Thalia muttered to Nico who nodded in agreement.

**The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad.**

Poseidon smiled warmly down at Percy, lulling the boy to sleep with his touch, but did not say anything. Jason continued reading.

**I don't have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile. My mom doesn't like to talk about him because **_**it **_**makes her sad. She has no pictures.**

**See, they weren't married. She told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back.**

**Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.**

"Hmm…" Hermes hummed, looking thoughtful. "Not bad, not bad… Not the full truth, not technically a lie. Maybe she could give Grover lessons on lying."

"Hermes?"

"Yes?"

"Stay away from her or you will find yourself in a very unpleasant place."

**She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once.**

Annabeth smiled slightly. "That's because Sally is wonderful."

**But I knew I wasn't an easy kid.**

Thalia snorted and tried to disguise it as a cough and sneaked a glance at Little Percy who was asleep in Poseidon's arms once more. "That's an understatement."

**Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano, who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew him, then showed his true colors as a world-class jerk. When I was young, I nick named him Smelly Gabe. I'm sorry, but it's the truth. The guy reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts.**

All the demigods made gagging noises and Aphrodite looked like she was about to faint, even the gods looked disgusted.

**Between the two of us, we made my mom's life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her,**

"It better not be anything less than the way a queen should be treated," Poseidon growled lowly, hurricanes seeming to storm in eyes.

**the way he and I got along ... well, when I came home is a good example.**

**I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. The television blared ESPN. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.**

"That's disgusting." Piper stated, eyes filled with disgust and the other murmured their agreements.

Hephaestus tilted his head, glancing at Ares. "Are we sure he didn't accidently describe where Ares lives?"

Ares glared at him but didn't say anything, but he did seem to clutch the word on his belt a little tighter.

**Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, "So, you're home."**

**"Where's my mom?"**

**"Working," he said. "You got any cash?"**

**That was it. No **_**Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?**_

"Oh Percy…" Poseidon sighed, gazing down at his son in his arms. "I wish there was something I could do…"

**Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.**

Aphrodite fanned herself and looked a little green, as if she was trying not to throw up. Piper looked a little pale as well, but she would deny every bit of it later.

"**He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don't know why he hadn't been fired long before. He just kept on collecting paychecks, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. He called that our "guy secret." Meaning, if I told my mom, he would punch my lights out.**

"What?" Annabeth growled, her grey eyes stormy. He never told her that! And the way he said it… like it had happened before he just learned his lesson.

"Stealing money, cigars, beer, gambling, beating up defenseless kids," Hephaestus ticked off his fingers as he talked. "Are we sure he isn't talking about Ares. His voice made it seem like he was genuinely concerned, but his eyes were full of amusement and he smirked at Ares who snarled back.

**"I don't have any cash," I told him.**

**He raised a greasy eyebrow.**

**Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should've covered up everything else.**

Athena sat with perfect posture in her chair with a thoughtful look on her face. No one noticed, but the gears in her head were spinning. Could it be…? This woman was incredibly brave, Athena thought, feeling some respect towards Sally

**"You took a taxi from the bus station," he said. "Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof, he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?"**

**Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. "Come on, Gabe," he said. "The kid just got here."**

"At least someone there seems to have some ounce of humanity." Artemis muttered, her eyes filled with disgust. Men.

**"Am I **_**right**_**?**_**" **_**Gabe repeated.**

**Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.**

Hermes and Apollo looked at each other and a small grin crossed their faces but neither of them said anything. Later, when the gods and goddess tried to figure who had passed gas neither one of them said a word.

**"Fine," I said. I dug a wad of dollars out of my pocket and threw the money on the table. "I hope you lose."**

**"Your report card came, brain boy!" he shouted after me. "I wouldn't act so snooty!"**

Annabeth raised an eyebrow. "Report card? Hmm…" she looked curious. "I wonder what he got."

**I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn't my room. During school months, it was Gabe's "study." He didn't study anything in there except old car magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.**

"That's gross. Can't he leave Percy's room alone at the very least?" Thalia shook her head, finding herself continually disgusted by this man.

**I dropped my suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.**

"Sarcasm." Hermes noted, scribbling on a piece of paper. "Could come in handy…" he muttered to himself.

**Gabe's smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs. Dodds,** **or the sound of that old fruit lady's shears snipping the yarn.**

**But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remembered Grover's look of panic—how he'd made me promise I wouldn't go home without him. A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone—something—was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons.**

Annabeth sighed fondly. "Seaweed bring, knowing your luck there probably is something heading to kill you right now."

Poseidon held Percy just a little tighter upon hearing that.

**Then I heard my mom's voice. "Percy?"**

**She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.**

Ares snorted. "Wimp." He muttered and Aphrodite smacked him, who thought it was very sweet that this boy could feel like that when his mother arrived. She could tell they loved each other. She was, after all, the goddess of all love, not just romantic.

**My mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room.**

**Her eyes sparkle and change color in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few gray streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old. When she looks at me, it's like she's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad.**

**I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gabe.**

"See, his mother is nice and loves him." Hephaestus muttered loudly, Hera choosing to ignore it as she studied her nails. This was boring. After all, it wasn't her son, so why should she have to sit here and listen?

**"Oh, Percy." She hugged me tight. "I can't believe it. You've grown since Christmas!"**

**Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She'd brought me a huge bag of "free samples," the way she always did when I came home.**

Leo's eyes grew sorrowful. He remembered when his mother used to-no. he shoved away the thought and forced an excited grin on his face, as if he was ecstatic about the thought of getting candy. He told himself he wouldn't think about that.

**We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings, she ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn't put in my letters. She didn't mention anything about my getting expelled. She didn't seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was her little boy doing all right?**

"Awww…" Aphrodite cooed and glanced over at where Poseidon was holding a now awake Percy. She hesitated before asking, "Can I?" The boy seeme so adorable, she just wanted to hold him and never let him go.

Poseidon glanced at her and hesitated only for a moment before he nodded and gently handed Percy over to Aphrodite.

Aphrodite made cooing noises and Percy garbled incoherently and grinned toothily up at Aphrodite. The goddess of love squealed and laughed along with Percy who started chattering and entertaining himself by pulling on her curls and then letting them go, watching them bounce in the air.

Poseidon watched on with warm eyes and a smile crossed his face at the sight.

**I told her she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I was really, really glad to see her.**

"Of course you were idiot." Thalia muttered, rolling her eyes. "Boys."

**From the other room, Gabe yelled, "Hey, Sally—how about some bean dip, huh?"**

**I gritted my teeth.**

**My mom is the nicest lady in the world. She should've been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe.**

"Good thing she's married to Paul now then." Nico grumbled, trying to look like he wasn't paying close attention to the story even though he was secretly memorizing every word.

**For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I told her I wasn't too down about the expulsion. I'd lasted almost the whole year this time. I'd made some new friends. I'd done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself.**

**I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr. Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofit suddenly didn't seem so bad.**

Piper looked sympathetic. "Wow. He must really feel bad about things if that girl didn't seem so bad to him anymore."

**Until that trip to the museum ...**

**"What?" my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. "Did something scare you?"**

**"No, Mom."**

**I felt bad lying.**

"Good." Annabeth glared at the book. "Why didn't you just tell her what happened?"

Hermes had a look of disapproval on his face. "No. Never feel bad about lying, there's always a reason someone lies and that reason makes your actions justifiable."

**I wanted to tell her about Mrs. Dodds and the three old ladies with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.**

**She pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn't push me.**

**"I have a surprise for you," she said. "We're going to the beach."**

**My eyes widened. "Montauk?"**

"What's Montauk?" Jason wondered, as did a few of the others.

No one answered, though some saw the faraway look in Poseidon's eyes and the smile on his face as he watched Aphrodite entertain his son.

**"Three nights—same cabin."**

**"When?"**

**She smiled. "As soon as I get changed."**

**I couldn't believe it. My mom and I hadn't been to Montauk the last two summers, because Gabe said there wasn't enough money.**

**Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled, "Bean dip, Sally? Didn't you hear me?"**

Artemis sprang to her feet, eyes full of fire as she glared at Jason. "No woman should be talked to like that!" She snarled and Jason flinched.

"I'm just reading what it says!" he protested and Apollo somehow managed to calm her down but she continued to glare at Jason and mutter under her breath.

**I wanted to punch him, **

"Violence!" Ares cheered, looking more excited then what was probably considered healthy at the of violence happening. The book had been incredibly dull so far.

**but I met my mom's eyes and I understood she was offering me a deal: be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.**

"Damn." Ares slumped down in his throne, looking an awful lot like a kid who had just been told he wasn't allowed to have any candy.

**"I was on my way, honey," she told Gabe. "We were just talking about the trip."**

**Gabe's eyes got small. "The trip? You mean you were serious about that?"**

**"I knew it," I muttered. "He won't let us go."**

"He better." Poseidon muttered darkly, clutching his trident a little tighter.

**"Of course he will," my mom said evenly. "Your step father is just worried about money. That's all. Besides," she added, "Gabriel won't have to settle for bean dip. I'll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works."**

Hermes nodded and muttered to himself as he scribbled something down on the notepad he has had in front of him since the book started. A few were curious but no one spoke up.

**Gabe softened a bit. "So this money for your trip ... it comes out of your clothes budget, right?"**

**"Yes, honey," my mother said.**

"WHAT?" Aphrodite screeched, looking absolutely horrified. Percy began sniffling in her arms and started crying.

Poseidon frowned. "Aphrodite." He warned and Aphrodite had the decency to look ashamed as she calmed Percy down by letting him play with her hair once again."

**"And you won't take my car anywhere but there and back."**

**"We'll be very careful."**

**Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip ... And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game."**

**Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.**

Everyone cheered, Ares might have been the loudest though no one was sure. They were all positive that he seemed to pay a little more attention to the book, however.

**But my mom's eyes warned me not to make him mad.**

"Damn." Ares muttered again and slouched down in his throne, seemingly uninterested in the book once again.

**Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care what he thought?**

**"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I'm really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now."**

**Gabe's eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in my statement.**

"More sarcasm…" Hermes muttered to himself and scribbled something down, then paused, looking thoughtful before he started scribbling in his notepad again.

**"Yeah, whatever," he decided.**

Artemis snorted in disgust. "Men."

**He went back to his game.**

**"Thank you, Percy," my mom said. "Once we get to Montauk, we'll talk more about... whatever you've forgotten to tell me, okay?"**

**For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes—the same fear I'd seen in Grover during the bus ride—as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air.**

"Smart woman." Athena muttered grudgingly and shot Poseidon a look before averting her gaze and listening to Jason read the story.

**But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. **

**She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.**

**An hour later we were ready to leave.**

**Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my mom's bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking—and more important, his '78 Camaro—for the whole weekend.**

**"Not a scratch on this car, brain boy," he warned me as I loaded the last bag. "Not one little scratch."**

"Like he was the one who was going to be driving." Poseidon complained. "He's what twelve?"

**Like I'd be the one driving. **

"Like father like son." Apollo snickered and Poseidon just rolled his eyes, though secretly was happy that Percy thought like he did.

**I was twelve. But that didn't matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he'd find a way to blame me.**

**Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can't explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the stair case as if he'd been shot from a cannon. **

Everyone was silent for a minute before Zeus spoke, glancing suspiciously at Percy who was cooing and playing with Aphrodite's hair. "The boy is strong. He could be very dangerous; a threat."

"To his enemies." Annabeth agreed and urged Jason to continue reading before one of the gods did something that caused a fight to break out.

**Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn't stay long enough to find out.**

**I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it.**

**Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets,**

Athena and Annabeth shuddered. Annabeth reminded herself that if she ever went there to not open the cupboards.

**and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.**

**I loved the place.**

**We'd been going there since I was a baby. My mom had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she'd met my dad.**

Aphrodite was very calm as she placed her hands over Percy's ears before she let out a loud squeal and Annabeth had a feeling if she had a fan she would be fanning herself. "THAT'S SO SWEET!" She cried.

Poseidon blushed and became suddenly interested in his trident as the male gods started snickering at him until Hera shut them up.

**As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the color of the sea.**

Poseidon smiled, remembering all too clearly the beautiful colors of Sally's eyes the moment he saw her. She was the most beautiful mortal he had ever laid eyes on, even still.

**We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my mom had brought from work.**

"What's with all the blue?" Jason wondered aloud, glancing at the three demigods who knew Percy best. None of them answered, though they all had a small smile playing on their lips, s if they were remembering a time years ago.

**I guess I should explain the blue food.**

**See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This—along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs. Ugliano—**

The girls in the room cheered. They would have done the exact same thing.

**was proof that she wasn't totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like me.**

Thalia rolled her eyes. "Again, total understatement. He has a rebellious streak bigger than Ares' ego."

Hephaestus laughed, grinning widely. "Good one!"

Thalia looked proud of herself, though it was to be noted she was careful not to look at Ares who looked like he wanted to strangle someone.

**When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Mom told me stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.**

Athena grew intrigued. This woman, as a writer? That could be… interesting. Very interesting indeed.

**Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk—my father. Mom's eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.**

**"He was kind, Percy," she said. "Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes."**

Poseidon smiled and gazed down at his son, who had fallen back asleep in Aphrodite's arms. He was pleased to know they would grow to look like each other.

Annabeth's eyes grew misty but she refused to cry. Gazing at Poseidon, she could almost see Percy sitting there instead and she had to look away. Thalia put a comforting hand on her shoulder and Annabeth gave her a small smile.

**Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud."**

"I am proud." Poseidon stated, reaching over to take Percy from Aphrodite. He placed a chaste kiss on Percy's forehead and ran a comforting hand through the tufts of hair on Percy's head.

**I wondered how she could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.**

"What?" Annabeth exclaimed, outraged. "He told me the he always had Fs!" she narrowed her eys and started muttering to herself. "When I get my hands on that boy…"

Leo and Jason glanced at Annabeth ad scooted away an inch or two, suddenly very frightened and feeling very sympathetic towards Percy.

**"How old was I?" I asked. "I mean ... when he left?"**

**She watched the flames. "He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin."**

**"But... he knew me as a baby."**

**"No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born."**

**I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember ... something about my father. A warm glow. A smile.**

Poseidon glanced up when the others looked at him questioningly. He shrugged. "I visit him sometimes. I visited him the other day when he was asleep. I didn't know he was awake."

The other demigods were careful not to meet the eyes of their parents, and their parents were careful not to look at their children. None of the other gods or goddesses had been that thoughtful to them.

**I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I'd felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he'd never even seen me...**

**I felt angry at my father. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He'd left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.**

Poseidon looked crushed, and Annabeth found herself speaking before she could stop herself. "Don't worry, he isn't mad anymore. He understands."

Poseidon looked relieved but Athena looked suspicious. "How come you know so much about this boy, Annabeth?" she asked her daughter.

Annabeth bit her lip and glared at Jason, threatening him to keep reading with her eyes or she would flay him alive.

**"Are you going to send me away again?" I asked her. "To another boarding school?"**

**She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.**

**"I don't know, honey." Her voice was heavy. "I think ... I think we'll have to do something."**

**"Because you don't want me around?"**

"Percy!" Annabeth gasped, a frown on her face. The others glared at her, wanting to hear how Sally would react and she quickly shut her mouth, biting back what she wanted to say.

**I regretted the words as soon as they were out.**

"Good." Annabeth muttered quietly to herself.

**My mom's eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight. "Oh, Percy, no. I—I **_**have **_**to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away."**

**Her words reminded me of what Mr. Brunner had said—that it was best for me to leave Yancy.**

**"Because I'm not normal," I said.**

"None of us our normal." Leo stated, haven grown bored very quickly and was now building a small airplane out of random objects from his tool belt. "Get with the program. Like, hello, I catch on fire."

**"You say that as if it's a bad thing, Percy. But you don't realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe."**

**"Safe from what?"**

**She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me—all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I'd tried to forget.**

**During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.**

Poseidon frowned slightly, looking a bit alarmed. "That wasn't me. I didn't send any of my men to watch Percy. At least, not when they lived there."

**Before that—a really early memory. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I'd somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.**

Jason's eyes widened and he stared at the three demigods who were friends with Percy. "He did that? But… Hercules did that, didn't he? He had super strength!"

Leo let out a low whistle. "This guy's powerful and he doesn't even realize it."

**In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.**

**I knew I should tell my mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my math teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn't make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that.**

Hera nodded approvingly. "Good. Sacrificing your safety to not ruin a day with your mother is what a good son should do."

**"I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could," my mom said. "They told me that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, Percy—the place your father wanted to send you. And I just... I just can't stand to do it."**

**"My father wanted me to go to a special school?"**

**"Not a school," she said softly. "A summer camp."**

Annabeth smiled slightly. Camp Half-Blood. Home.

**My head was spinning. Why would my dad—who hadn't even stayed around long enough to see me born— talk to my mom about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't she ever mentioned it before?**

**"I'm sorry, Percy," she said, seeing the look in my eyes. "But I can't talk about it. I—I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good."**

**"For good? But if it's only a summer camp..."**

**She turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her any more questions she would start to cry.**

**That night I had a vivid dream.**

Thalia frowned. "Great, another one?" she complained. "He always has awful dreams of wars and death."

Ares perked up. "War and death?" Now he was interested.

**It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf.**

**The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagles wings. **

Everyone looked at Poseidon and Zeus uneasily. "What are you two fighting about now?" Hera asked in exasperation, rubbing her temples with her hands.

"It's probably his fault." Zeus stated, glaring at Poseidon.

"No, it's probably your fault!"

"No, yours!"

"No, yours!"

"ANYWAY." Annabeth said loudly and motioned for Jason to continue reading.

**As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.**

Now everyone looked at Hades uneasily. He shrugged. "Don't look at me. This is happening years from now, I probably have my reasons."

**I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse's wide eyes, and I screamed, **_**No!**_

**I woke with a start.**

Jason frowned. "Man, I'm glad I don't have any dreams like that."

**Outside, it really was storming; the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses. There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery.**

**With the next thunderclap, my mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said, "Hurricane."**

**I knew that was crazy. Long Island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten.**

Poseidon frowned slightly. "I never forget anything. Obviously a war is beginning, or else I would have no reason to wreak this kind of havoc. Especially if Percy was on the beach at the time of the hurricane.

**Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.** **Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice—someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.**

**My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.**

**Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn't... he wasn't exactly Grover.**

"How is he Grover but not Grover?" Leo asked in confusion. The helicopter he made was buzzing around his head and starting to catch Little Percy's attention.

"Probably because Percy is seeing what Grover actually is?" Nico snapped. "Pay attention!"

**"Searching all night," he gasped. "What were you thinking?"**

**My mother looked at me in terror—not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.**

**"Percy," she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?"**

**I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn't understand what I was seeing.**

Annabeth rolled her eyes. Percy had always been clueless but really? This shouldn't be that hard to process.

_**"O Zeu kai alloi theoi!" **_**he yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you **_**tell **_**her?"**

**I was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I'd understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. **

Thalia copied Annabeth, rolling her blue eyes. "He ran, dimwit."

**Because Grover didn't have his pants on—** **and where his legs should be ... where his legs should be ...**

**My mom looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before: **_**"Percy. **_**Tell me **_**now**_**!"**

**I stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds, and my mom stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.**

**She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, "Get to the car. Both of you. **_**Go**_**!**_**"**_

"Smart woman." Athena commented. "Though she is mortal, she has enough sense to run."

Poseidon glanced at her suspiciously before deciding that was probably the closest Athena was going to get to complimenting Sally and stayed quiet.

**Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.**

**Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.**

Jason looked up. "That's the end."

Little Percy wailed from where he was sitting in Poseidon's arms, stubby arms reaching out for where Leo was seated.

Poseidon frowned slightly. "I think he wants over with you six."

"Hewicop! Hewicop!" Percy cried, making Leo grin. "I'll take him."

Hesitantly, Poseidon handed Percy off to Leo who held the helicopter down for percy to play with. He squealed happily and gurgled as he made noises and pretended to fly it around, seemingly enjoying himself.

"I'll read," piper said with a smile as she watched Leo. She took the book from Jason and read out thechapter name.**"****My Mother Teaches Me Bullfighting."**

Did you guys enjoy it? I enjoyed writing it! If you have any suggestions about what could happen, who I could bring in, etc, please tell me in the reviews! I always love hearing your ideas and more often than not they get inputted into the story! So please, review, Thanks!


	5. My Mother Teaches Me Bullfighting

**I hope you guys enjoy this chapter! I sure did enjoy writing it haha**

"Bullfighting?" Poseidon looked confused, as did most people in the room. Except for Annabeth. Annabeth had a sad look in her eyes as she stared down at the floor, biting her bottom lip gently. She knew this was going to be hard for Poseidon, and her as well.

Ares, however, was the only person in the room looking excited. "You didn't tell me Sally knew bullfighting!" his eyes gleamed with something sinister in them. "Bullfighting is one of my favorite sports! At least," he added. "When there's blood involved."

Piper cleared her throat loudly, feeling uncomfortable by that statement, and started reading.

**We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the wind shield. I didn't know how my mom could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.**

"This woman knows how to drive." Apollo grinned, looking thoughtful. "Maybe I should let her take my chariot out for a spin. She'd probably be pretty good at-"

"No." Poseidon interrupted, sending a dangerous glare in Apollo's direction.

**Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to me in the backseat and I wondered if I'd gone insane, or if he was wearing some kind of shag-carpet pants.**

"I dunno…" Thalia said skeptically, but there was a glimmer of amusement in her eyes. "There were sometimes when I was convinced he was insane."

**But, no, the smell was one I remembered from kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo— lanolin, like from wool. The smell of a wet barnyard animal.**

**All I could think to say was, "So, you and my mom... know each other?"**

**Grover's eyes flitted to the rear view mirror, though there were no cars behind us. "Not exactly," he said. "I mean, we've never met in person. But she knew I was watching you."**

**"Watching me?"**

"Stalker." Leo muttered none too quietly and the only reason Piper didn't smack him was because Percy was on his shoulders, playing with the mess of curls on Leo's head and seemingly very entertained.

**"Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn't faking being your friend," he added hastily. "I **_**am **_**your friend."**

**"Urn ... what **_**are **_**you, exactly?"**

**"That doesn't matter right now."**

**"It doesn't matter? From the waist down, my best friend is a donkey—"**

Annabeth sighed in exasperation. "He always knows the wrong thing to say."

**Grover let out a sharp, throaty **_**"Blaa-ha-ha!"**_

**I'd heard him make that sound before, but I'd always assumed it was a nervous laugh. Now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat.**

**"Goat!" he cried.**

**"What?"**

**"I'm a **_**goat **_**from the waist down."**

"Goat! Goat!" Percy repeated, now hanging upside down by Leo, giggling up a fit.

**"You just said it didn't matter."**

_**"Blaa-ha-ha!**_ **There are satyrs who would trample you underhoof for such an insult!"**

**"Whoa. Wait. Satyrs. You mean like ... Mr. Brunner's myths?"**

**"Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a **_**myth, **_**Percy? Was Mrs. Dodds a myth?"**

**"So you **_**admit **_**there was a Mrs. Dodds!"**

"So not the time…" Thalia sighed, rubbing her temples. Damn, he wasn't even technically here and Percy was giving her a headache.

**"Of course."**

**"Then why—"**

**"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realize who you are."**

**"Who I—wait a minute, what do you mean?"**

**The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer than before. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.**

Thalia frowned slightly, growing concerned. She didn't remember Percy telling her about this, but then, she couldn't really blame him. They spent most of their time fighting each other.

**"Percy," my mom said, "there's too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety."**

**"Safety from what? Who's after me?"**

**"Oh, nobody much," Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. "Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions."**

Poseidon glared at Hades, his rage sparked once again. How dare he send that Kindly One after his son?

Hades, on the other hand, was looking extremely bored and carefully avoiding looking at anyone for too long.

"Well that's good news." Nico said sarcastically. "I was worried it was going to be more than just a few."

**"Grover!"**

**"Sorry, Mrs. Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?"**

"Yes, please, drive faster." Poseidon muttered to himself, closing his eyes momentarily to get a grip on things.

**I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn't do it. I knew this wasn't a dream. I had no imagination. I could never dream up something this weird.**

**My mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.**

"Camp…" The demigods sighed longingly, wishing more than anything they could go back home.

"Camp…" Dionysus had groaned at the same time, though with more contempt then anything.

**"Where are we going?" I asked.**

**"The summer camp I told you about." My mother's voice was tight; she was trying for my sake not to be scared. "The place your father wanted to send you."**

**"The place you didn't want me to go."**

**"Please, dear," my mother begged. "This is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger."**

**"Because some old ladies cut yarn."**

Athena frowned in disappointment. "Those old ladies are in control of fate. They are some of the most feared ever to have walked this Earth."

**"Those weren't old ladies," Grover said. "Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means—the fact they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you're about to ... when someone's about to die."**

**"Whoa. You said 'you.'"**

**"No I didn't. I said 'someone.'"**

**"You meant 'you.' As in **_**me.**_**"**

"Boys." Artemis and Thalia muttered, both of them rolling their eyes.

**"I meant **_**you, **_**like 'someone.' Not you, **_**you.**_**"**

**"Boys!" my mom said.**

**She pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she'd swerved to avoid—a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.**

**"What was that?" I asked.**

Annabeth inhaled sharply, biting down hard on her bottom lip. Percy never told her about this part. About what had happened in the car on their way to the camp.

**"We're almost there," my mother said, ignoring my question.**

**"Another mile. Please. Please. Please."**

**I didn't know where **_**there **_**was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive.**

**Outside, nothing but rain and darkness—the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs. Dodds and the moment when she'd changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really **_**hadn't **_**been human. She'd meant to kill me.**

**Then I thought about Mr. Brunner ... and the sword he had thrown me.**

**Before I could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck.**

"Oh no…" Jason breathed, eyes widening as he realized what was coming. His gaze shot to Zeus who clenched his jaw and refused to look at him.

**There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling **_**boom!, **_**and our car exploded.**

**I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time.**

**I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver's seat and said, "Ow."**

**"Percy!" my mom shouted.**

**"I'm okay..."**

**I tried to shake off the daze. I wasn't dead. The car hadn't really exploded. We'd swerved into a ditch. Our driver's-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.**

"Holy shit…" Nico breathed, eyes wide in surprise.

**Lightning. That was the only explanation.**

**We'd been blasted right off the road.**

"Zeus!" Poseidon roared, the rage in his eyes unlike anything seen before. "How dare you-"

"I dare do what I want." Zeus snapped. "Obviously this boy must be a threat to me in the future."

"Uh…" Leo's voice sounded timid and scared his face white as a sheet of paper. "Could you please stop yelling? It's upsetting Percy." Percy was sitting in Leo's lap now, staring up at Poseidon with large, scared eyes and looked to be on the verge of crying.

Immediately Poseidon went quiet, as did Zeus, but they still glared at each other and the tension in the room was heavy and thick.

**Next to me in the backseat was a big motionless lump. "Grover!"**

**He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!**

A small smile formed on Annabeth's face. She was touched to know that he still cared about Grover despite everything.

**Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope.**

**"Percy," my mother said, "we have to ..." Her voice faltered.**

**I looked back. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, I saw a figure lumbering toward us on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made my skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns.**

Artemis covered her mouth her hand to stifle her gasp, and she and Athena shared a look. How in the world were these people going to be able to survive? It was impossible for someone so inexperienced!

**"Percy," my mother said, deadly serious. "Get out of the car."**

**My mother threw herself against the driver's-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. I tried mine. Stuck too. I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might've been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.**

**"Climb out the passenger's side!" my mother told me. "Percy—you have to run. Do you see that big tree?"**

_**"What?"**_

**Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof I saw the tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas tree-sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.**

"Hey!" Thalia said brightly, a twinkle in her eyes. "That's me!"

**"That's the property line," my mom said. "Get over that hill and you'll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don't look back. Yell for help. Don't stop until you reach the door."**

**"Mom, you're coming too."**

**Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.**

"Oh, Percy…" Annabeth whispered, her heart hurting. It was like going through everything that had happened all over again. He had had that same look in his eyes when he was telling her what happened to his mom that first day they met.

**"No!" I shouted. "You **_**are **_**coming with me. Help me carry Grover."**

**"Food!" Grover moaned, a little louder.**

**The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward us, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realized he **_**couldn't **_**be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands—huge meaty hands—were swinging at his sides. There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head ... was his head. And the points that looked like horns …**

**"He doesn't want **_**us**_**," my mother told me. "He wants **_**you. **_**Besides, I can't cross the property line."**

**"But..."**

**"We don't have time, Percy. Go. Please."**

"No, Sally…" Poseidon whispered, his eyes full of pain and helplessness. He wished there was something he could do.

**I got mad, then—mad at my mother, at Grover the goat,** **at the thing with horns that was lumbering toward us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull.**

**I climbed across Grover and pushed the door open into the rain. "We're going together. Come on, Mom."**

**"I told you—"**

**"Mom! I am not leaving you. Help me with Grover."**

"That loyalty could get him into some trouble one day…" Athena murmured, mostly to herself though a few others sitting next to her heard her and couldn't help but agree. Loyalty that strong was dangerous.

**I didn't wait for her answer. I scrambled outside, dragging Grover from the car. He was surprisingly light, but I couldn't have carried him very far if my mom hadn't come to my aid.**

**Together, we draped Grover's arms over our shoulders and started stumbling uphill through wet waist-high grass.**

"You kids need to trim that when you get back." Dionysus said absently before returning back to his pac-man game, face contorted unattractively in concentration.

**Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monster. He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of **_**Muscle Man **_**magazine—bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except under wear—**

**I mean, bright white Fruit of the Looms**

Apollo and Hermes both started snickering as Percy was describing the beast, and then they full on burst out laughing. Artemis had to threaten to shoot both of them where it would hurt before they finally shut up.

—**which would've looked funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.**

**His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns—enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.**

"That's a very um…" Hephaestus began, searching for the right word. "Interesting way to describe it." He finished, a small smirk playing on his lips.

Ares was growing more interested now that it seemed like some fighting was going to soon be taking place. He wondered how much gore and death there would be.

**I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr. Brunner told us. But he couldn't be real.**

**I blinked the rain out of my eyes. "That's—"**

**"Pasiphae's son," my mother said.**

"Smart woman," Athena commented and glanced sideways at Poseidon, who still seemed worried but distracted at the moment by his son who was crawling from Leo and over to Nico.

Nico stiffened at first, but one look at those sea-green eyes and he was puddy in the boys hands. Percy yawned tiredly and splayed out on Nico's lap like a cat, falling asleep almost immediately.

**"I wish I'd known how badly they want to kill you."**

**"But he's the Min—"**

**"Don't say his name," she warned. "Names have power."**

A couple of the demigods murmured in agreement, as did a few of the gods. Athena frowned slightly, however. She underestimated the wisdom of this woman. She was smarter then she gave her credit for at first. Perhaps it was because she assumed that anyone who had anything to do with Poseidon was as dumb as him.

**The pine tree was still way too far—a hundred yards uphill at least.**

**I glanced behind me again.**

**The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows—or not looking, exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. I wasn't sure why he bothered, since we were only about fifty feet away.**

**"Food?" Grover moaned.**

"Oh my gosh…" Thalia muttered in an exasperated tone under her breath. Grover still hadn't changed then, had he?

**"Shhh," I told him. "Mom, what's he doing? Doesn't he see us?"**

**"His sight and hearing are terrible," she said. "He goes by smell. But he'll figure out where we are soon enough."**

**As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe's Camaro by the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded.**

_**Not a scratch, **_**I remembered Gabe saying.**

**Oops.**

Everyone burst out laughing, Hermes and Apollo the most. "So much for that!" Apollo laughed, practically falling out of his char.

Annabeth muttered something under her breath and only Thalia was able to hear her. The Hunter looked surprised and exclaimed, "Annabeth!"

Annabeth has the decency to blush and mutter an apology before Piper chuckled and continued to read.

**"Percy," my mom said. "When he sees us, he'll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way— directly sideways. He can't change directions very well once he's charging. Do you understand?"**

**"How do you know all this?"**

**"I've been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected this. I was selfish, keeping you near me."**

Hera clicked her tongue in disagreement. "It is not a selfish thing to do. That is very honorable; her keeping her son so close even when there is the constant danger that she could be killed should a monster find Percy."

**"Keeping me near you? But—"**

**Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill.**

**He'd smelled us.**

**The pine tree was only a few more yards, but the hill was getting steeper and slicker, and Grover wasn't getting any lighter.**

**The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he'd be on top of us.**

Without realizing it, Nico nervously began running his hand through the thick tuft of black hair on little Percy's head. Percy mumbled and Nico froze, worrying he woke the young boy but he didn't and Nico sighed in relief.

**My mother must've been exhausted, but she shouldered Grover. "Go, Percy! Separate! Remember what I said."**

**I didn't want to split up, but I had the feeling she was right—it was our only chance. I sprinted to the left, turned, and saw the creature bearing down on me. His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.**

Aphrodite made a disgusted sound, her nose scrunched up at just the thought of something smelling so bad. "That it so disgusting!" A few others murmured in agreement, though they weren't as dramatic about it as Aphrodite was.

**He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at my chest.**

**The fear in my stomach made me want to bolt, but that wouldn't work. I could never outrun this thing.**

**So I held my ground, and at the last moment, I jumped to the side.**

Poseidon shifted in his throne nervously, every once in a while he glanced over at Percy who was still sleeping on Nico's lap to reassure himself that his son was still safe. At least, for now, which was the most he could ask for at this point.

**The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration and turned, but not toward me this time, toward my mother, who was setting Grover down in the grass.**

Poseidon was no longer nervous, but nearing the edge of panic, his eyes revealing his emotions along with his white-knuckled hands as they clutched his trident tightly. No, Sally couldn't get hurt. She just-she just couldn't.

**We'd reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley, just as my mother had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the rain. But that was half a mile away. We'd never make it.**

**The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing my mother, who was now retreating slowly downhill, back toward the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover.**

**"Run, Percy!" she told me. "I can't go any farther. Run!"**

**But I just stood there, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her. She tried to sidestep, as she'd told me to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. His hand shot out and grabbed her by the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she struggled, kicking and pummeling the air.**

A gasp escaped Poseidon, and a few worried looks were cast his way but he paid them no mind. No, no, no. He must be hearing this wrong. It wasn't Sally. It had to be just some random human getting in the way.

But, even that excuse sounded weak to him.

**"Mom!"**

**She caught my eyes, managed to choke out one last word: "Go!"**

**Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around my mother's neck, and she dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and she was simply ... gone.**

"No…" Poseidon whispered, in a state of shock. He stared at the book in Piper's hand, as if the words written on it were wrong, that it meant someone other then Sally. Other than his Sally.

Before he could get anymore worked up, Annabeth quickly spoke up. "Lord Poseidon, Sally is all right. I promise, she isn't dead."

Poseidon slowly turns his gaze to Annabeth and after a long, tense moment he nods and slowly starts to relax. But that did little to quench the worry and panic building inside of him. Where did she go? Who took her? If she is alive, then in what state?

**"No!"**

**Anger replaced my fear. Newfound strength burned in my limbs—the same rush of energy I'd gotten when Mrs. Dodds grew talons.**

**The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The monster hunched over, snuffling my best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up and make him dissolve too.**

**I couldn't allow that.**

Athena listened silently, trying to figure this boy out. Loyalty was his fatal flaw, that was fairly obvious already. But why risk even more? It was such an unwise thing to d. he was told to run, given a distraction, so why didn't he take it?

**I stripped off my red rain jacket.**

**"Hey!" I screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster. "Hey, stupid! Ground beef!"**

Ares snorted. "The punk may be brave, or idiotic, but he needs to work on his insults. That makes me cringe."

**"Raaaarrrrr!" The monster turned toward me, shaking his meaty fists.**

**I had an idea—a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all.**

Jason was more amused than worried. It was obvious Percy survived, but he had to admit he was curious to how. He was taking on a minotaur, with absolutely no training at all. This had to be a hell of an idea if he was going to get through this.

**I put my back to the big pine tree and waved my red jacket in front of the bull-man, thinking I'd jump out of the way at the last moment.**

**But it didn't happen like that.**

Annabeth sighed and rubbed her temples, biting down on her lip to keep away the grin threatening to form on her face. "Of course it didn't."

**The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab me whichever way I tried to dodge.**

**Time slowed down.**

**My legs tensed. I couldn't jump sideways, so I leaped straight up, **

Ares looked bemused, his expression a little more smug than usual. "No way is that going to work." He knew exactly what Percy was planning on doing and there was no way it would work. It was just impossible.

**kicking off from the creature's head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on his neck.**

Ares was shocked, and Jason had to admit even he was surprised. This kid was a natural, how else would he have been able to pull off something like that?

**How did I do that?**

Zeus frowned, wondering just exactly how powerful this demigod was. He could be a very real threat. The thought made him frown deeper and his gaze shot to the baby in Nico's lap who was still sleeping.

**I didn't have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the monster's head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked my teeth out.**

Thalia frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. "You know, that really hurt." She complained. She remembered that vaguely, the feeling of pain at being rammed into. After all, it wasn't every day that the Minotaur rams into you with all whatever pounds of muscle.

**The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake me. I locked my arms around his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong. The rain was in my eyes. The smell of rotten meat burned my nostrils.**

**The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should have just backed up into the tree and smashed me flat, but I was starting to realize that this thing had only one gear: forward.**

**Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. I wanted to yell at him to shut up, but the way I was getting tossed around, if I opened my mouth I'd bite my own tongue off.**

Annabeth snorted. "I'm impressed he's managed to keep his mouth shut for this long. He never shuts up usually, especially in battle."

**"Food!" Grover moaned.**

**The bull-man wheeled toward him, pawed the ground again, and got ready to charge. I thought about how he had squeezed the life out of my mother, made her disappear in a flash of light, and rage filled me like high-octane fuel. I got both hands around one horn and I pulled backward with all my might.**

"No way…" Leo breathed, glancing at the demigods who seemed closest to Percy. "He doesn't… does he?"

No one answered him, but if Annabeth had a small smile on her face and a knowing look on her face, no one said anything.

**The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then—**_**snap!**_

Leo let out a low whistle of awe. "Dude… that's stupid impressive. I mean, the first monster fight I was in I almost got thrown off the Grand Canyon."

Ares had a blank look on his face, as if the he was unable to process how this punk managed to rip off the Minotaur's horn with his bare hands.

**The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back in the grass. My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was blurry, but I had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.**

**The monster charged.**

**Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barreled past, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage.**

Everyone cheered, relieved and impressed that at Percy's skills. Even Zeus had to admit this kid was good, but he didn't dare admit that to anyone but himself.

**The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disintegrate—not like my mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs. Dodds had burst apart.**

**The monster was gone.**

Poseidon grinned proudly, his gaze glittering. His son had done that. And he couldn't be ay prouder.

**The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I smelled like livestock and my knees were shaking. My head felt like it was splitting open. I was weak and scared and trembling with grief I'd just seen my mother vanish. I wanted to lie down and cry, but there was Grover, needing my help, so I managed to haul him up and stagger down into the valley, toward the lights of the farm house. I was crying, calling for my mother, but I held on to Grover—I wasn't going to let him go.**

"Aw…" Aphrodite looked like she was going to cry and Hephaestus smiled gently and handed her a surprisingly clean piece of pink cloth. She took it gratefully and gave him a small smile.

**The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blond hair curled like a princess's.**

Apollo looked quizzically at Aphrodite. "Is she one of yours?"

For some reason, Aphrodite didn't think this girl was hers. Fitting with this time period, she didn't have any children at the camp that matched that description.

**They both looked down at me, and the girl said, "He's the one. He must be."**

**"Silence, Annabeth," the man said. "He's still conscious. Bring him inside."**

Annabeth blushed lightly at Percy's description of her ad stared down at her hands. Did he really think she was pretty? Self-consciously she reached up and lightly touched her hair. It wasn't nearly as curly as it used to be.

Athena raised an eyebrow at her daughter, "'The one'?"

Annabeth blushed again and shook her head. "N-Not like that!" she said quickly, "You'll see."

"Yeah, not yet." Thalia muttered under her breath and laughed as she deflected Annabeth's elbow.

Annabeth opened her mouth to retort but was cut off when Nico yeped in surprise, eyes wide. "H-He's gone!" he stood up and looked around, as if Percy somehow crawled under him or something. He just vanished!"

No one had barely any time to worry because suddenly they heard someone yelling and cursing from above and they looked up to see a boy falling from the sky.

**I hope you guys enjoyed it :) Review your thoughts and any suggestions you might have, anyone you would want to see come in, etc.**


	6. Damn You, Apollo

Percy was going to kill Apollo.

Well, as long as he wasn't already dead.

Curses flew from his mouth at 100 miles an hour as he fell from the sky and he only barely managed to avoid his neck by rolling across the ground to break his fall. "Damnit Apollo!" he cursed out loud and a scowl broke out on his face. "Why the hell you used the last reserves of your energy on me I will never know…"

"I don't know either." Percy jerked his head up towards the voice and saw he was staring right up at Apollo. Looking perfectly healthy and not close to death like he did a minute ago. Sitting on his throne. In Olympus.

F*ck.

Olympus!

With a strangled cry of surprise Percy stepped back several steps, his eyes wide as he gazed around. They were all here! Aprhodite, Hades, Artemis, Hermes, Hera, Zeus, and- "Dad!" he cried and ran towards his father's throne, coming to his knees right in front of him.

He gazed up at his father with tears in his eyes. He was here, alive, in Olympus. "Percy?" his father seemed confused. Frowning, Percy glanced around and saw all of the gods staring at him with suspicion and alarm. His gaze landed on Artemis, who had disdain in her eyes and it clicked.

Apollo's words.

_Escape this time until you are needed. We cannot risk you being in danger until the time is right._

Abruptly the tears left Percy's eyes and he stood up, taking a few steps back until he could easily gaze at all of the gods. "Oh." He scowled and glared at Apollo. "You know, you suck in the future."

Apollo spluttered, too shocked to make an appropriate reply. Someone was speaking to him but his mind was flying, trying to figure out a way to get back to his time in the future when he heard Poseidon ask, "Percy, what are you wearing?"

Confused, Percy looked down at his clothes. He had on black jeans smeared with dried mud and smashed berries that were starting to rip and his boots. A dark green shirt was on underneath his brown leather jacket and he had his trusty sword unsheathed by his side in its sheath. There were was also a knife strapped to his leg and one strapped to his forearm, plus a few concealed weapons, but other than that, nothing unusual.

"What do you mean?" Percy asked in confusion. He wasn't quite sure on the timeline yet, on what would have been going on right now. Was this after the Great War? Or before? And if before, how many years before?

"Well," Poseidon gestured behind him. "They are wearing clothes different from yours, much different, yet they claim to know you."

"Who?" The question barely let his mouth before he turned around and suddenly couldn't breathe. Standing in front of everyone was alive. Healthy. Shocked?

His eyes watered as he stared at all of his friends. Friends he thought were either dead or- No. he firmly smacked himself mentally. These were his friends from the past. His friends from the future were still- Percy stopped thinking about it and focused on the people in front of him.

Nico was there, gods how he had missed his smile, so was Thalia, Leo, Piper… His heartbeat quickened as his eyes landed on the blond haired boy with eyes so blue they could only belong with Jason. Percy stared at the boy, silently mouthing his name as he thought about the Jason waiting for him back in his time… wondering what happened to him… If he was dead…

"Percy?"

Percy's head jerked to the source of the whispered voice, his heart nearly leaping out of his chest. No. It couldn't be- "Annabeth?" his gaze locked on the blond haired girl standing just a few feet away from him.

They stared at each other before Percy ran towards her and before she could blink he was holding her tightly, so tightly. "Annabeth!" he choked, burying his face in her hair. He inhaled deeply, breathing in her scent, that wonderful scent that was indescribable as anything other than Annabeth and tried not to cry.

"Percy…" Annabeth whispered ear and Percy pulled back, his face searching hers and memorizing every detail. He caressed her cheek with his hand, biting his lip to keep from bursting into tears. "My Annabeth…" He opened his mouth to say how he thought she was dead, how almost everyone here was dead but he choked on his words. It was like someone stuffed something down his throat, making it so he couldn't talk.

Of course. The whole, 'don't talk about the future to people from the past' lecture Apollo gave him. Damnit.

"Percy… I thought you were dead!" Annabeth cried and Percy smiled at her gently.

"No, no Annabeth." Now he knew what she was talking about. When he was at Camp Jupiter. "I'm not dead. You guys will find me, I promise you will." But Percy knew that was all he could say.

"When are you from?" Annabeth asked her voice shaky. "Why are you here?" Obviously she could tell that he wasn't the Percy she was missing.

Percy hesitated before replying simply. "The future. It's hell." He tried to change the subject. It was obvious they were all doing something before he got here and Apollo did say to spend time here because it was too dangerous for him to be around until they were ready for him.

Percy followed Annabeth over to the others and gestured for him to sit down, which he did, right between her and Jason. "We were reading. About you?"

Percy briefly glanced at the book and groaned. "Shit… Seriously? Apollo actually wrote those?"

"We were just about to start the next chapter." Piper spoke up softly, an Percy turned to look at her. She seemed nervous so he smiled at her so she would relax. "Hey Piper. Do you mind if I…?" he trailed off, gesturing to the book.

She shook her head and handed him the book. While he reached for it, his gaze flitted over at Jason and he felt his heart ache. But this wasn't his Jason. And there was nothing he could do about it.

"**I Play Pinochle With a Horse."**

**Yeah. So this is a little different. I brought Percy in from another time in the future, a time after the war with Gaea. Basically this Percy is from a story of mine that is in the works and should be up soon. **

**A few years after the war with Gaea, everything is fine and dandy. Until and ancient, evil power awakens, one that the gods thought was gone for good. The world has erupted into chaos and nowhere is safe. The gods powers have been depleted, some are even dead. Now Percy and his friends have fight to survive and find a way to defeat this ancient power. Before it is too late.**

**So review about what you thought of this chapter! And my new story idea! would you guys be interested in reading something like that?**


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